Augmented reality, mixed reality, virtual reality, and other forms of digital reality as discussed herein, or as known in the art at the time of filing, or as developed, or becomes available, after the time of filing, can include interaction with real objects. With augmented reality, a user may view real objects or representations of real objects and a display component may add digital information about one or more of the real objects. For example, a heads-up display on a jet fighter may add a distance indication near a viewed enemy aircraft. For further example, a golfer may point a camera of a smartphone at a flag of a hole on the green, and a representation of the flag may be displayed on the display of the smartphone with a distance indication of the golfer from the hole. With mixed reality, a user may view real-world objects alongside virtual objects. For example, goggles may display a representation of a real object, such as a table, as viewed through a front-facing camera and the goggles may add a digital image of a virtual object, such as a bottle resting on the table, and when the user reaches for the digital image of the bottle, nothing is actually present on the table. For further example, a user may view on a display of a smartphone a representation of a user's face, and a digital image of a moustache may be overlaid the representation of the user's face. With virtual reality, a user may view a created virtual world. For example, a user may wear a headset with a display and walk through a virtual maze, yet because the user is ambulatory, the user may bump into real objects in the user's actual environment, despite the fictional environment viewed through the headset.
In current augmented reality and mixed reality environments, it is desirable to identify real objects. Such identification is typically done using global positioning system (GPS) technology. For example, a user may desire to go to a restaurant and may point a camera of a smartphone at the storefront of the restaurant building. The smartphone may use GPS processing to determine the location of the camera and may use at least one accelerometer to determine the direction the camera is pointing. Such information may be used to determine the address of the building being viewed by the user through the camera. Using such GPS technology, the building may be identified based on a location database that records the locations of restaurants, and the smartphone may, for example, display a rating of the restaurant occupying the building based on the determined location of the building.
However, such identification of the location of an object is insufficient at least for mobile objects, small stationary objects near each other, and stationary objects not tracked in a location database. For example, a user may wish to eat from a food truck but wants to determine the quality of the mobile restaurant before ordering a meal. If the user points a smartphone's camera at the food truck, although the smartphone may be able to determine the physical location of the food truck, it is not possible to know which restaurant is being used by the food truck utilizing GPS because any food truck could be parked at that particular location on the street. The user must rely on inputting into the smartphone the name of the restaurant displayed on the food truck in order to acquire a review of the restaurant utilizing the food truck.
Using a visible identifier, such as a restaurant sign on a food truck that a user sees, may be undesirable for certain objects, such as objects that are desired to look identical to users. For example, an augmented reality or virtual reality racing game may involve real objects of toy cars or other action figures, and it is desirable for all of the toy cars to look identical to each other. In this example, each toy car may have the same physical features and identical coats of paint, such that a typical user is unable to distinguish representations of the toy cars on a display of a smartphone. Furthermore, if each toy car is a remote-control car, the movement of each car precludes identification through a smartphone's typical GPS technology of any one car. For further example, objects based on Internet of Things (IoT) may all desirably look identical in a user's home, where it is undesirable to have a visible identification marker such as a visible quick response code. For example, IoT floor lamps may be located in a user's living room, but may nevertheless need to be uniquely identifiable to control the lighting operations of each of the IoT lamps, where such IoT floor lamps are too proximate to each other to be identifiable using a smartphone's GPS technology.
Consequently, there is currently a significant need in the digital reality arts, such as augmented reality and mixed reality, to provide a system and method to uniquely identify real objects that are visually indistinguishable from each other.